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“Gregory of Nazianzus -
Critique of Apollinarius and Apollinarianism”

Epistle
101 (part of)

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Do not let the men deceive themselves and others with
the assertion that the “Man of the Lord,” as they call Him, Who is rather our
Lord and God, is without human mind. For we do not sever the Man from the
Godhead, but we lay down as a dogma the Unity and Identity of Person, Who of old
was not Man but God, and the Only Son before all ages, unmingled with body or
anything corporeal; but Who in these last days has assumed Manhood also for our
salvation; passible in His Flesh, impassible in His Godhead; circumscript in the
body, uncircumscript in the Spirit; at once earthly and heavenly, tangible and
intangible, comprehensible and incomprehensible; that by One and the Same
Person, Who was perfect Man and also God, the entire humanity fallen through sin
might be created anew.

If anyone does not believe that
Holy Mary is the Mother of God, he is severed from the Godhead. If anyone should
assert that He passed through the Virgin as through a channel, and was not at
once divinely and humanly formed in her (divinely, because without the
intervention of a man; humanly, because in accordance with the laws of
gestation), he is in like manner godless. If any assert that the Manhood was
formed and afterward was clothed with the Godhead, he too is to be condemned.
For this were not a Generation of God, but a shirking of generation. If any
introduce the notion of Two Sons, one of God the Father, the other of the
Mother, and discredits the Unity and Identity, may he lose his part in the
adoption promised to those who believe aright. For God and Man are two natures,
as also soul and body are; but there are not two Sons or two Gods. For neither
in this life are there two manhoods; though Paul speaks in some such language of
the inner and outer man. And (if I am to speak concisely) the Saviour is made of
elements which are distinct from one another (for the invisible is not the same
with the visible, nor the timeless with that which is subject to time), yet He
is not two Persons. God forbid! For both natures are one by the combination, the
Deity being made Man, and the Manhood deified or however one should express it.
And I say different Elements, because it is the reverse of what is the case in
the Trinity; for There we acknowledge different Persons so as not to confound
the persons; but not different Elements, for the Three are One and the same in
Godhead.

If any should say that it wrought in Him by
grace as in a Prophet, but was not and is not united with Him in Essence—let him
be empty of the Higher Energy, or rather full of the opposite. If any worship
not the Crucified, let him be Anathema and be numbered among the Deicides. If
any assert that He was made perfect by works, or that after His Baptism, or
after His Resurrection from the dead, He was counted worthy of an adoptive
Sonship, like those whom the Greeks interpolate as added to the ranks of the
gods, let him be anathema. For that which has a beginning or a progress or is
made perfect, is not God, although the expressions may be used of His gradual
manifestation. If any assert that He has now put off His holy flesh, and that
His Godhead is stripped of the body, and deny that He is now with His body and
will come again with it, let him not see the glory of His Coming. For where is
His body now, if not with Him Who assumed it? For it is not laid by in the sun,
according to the babble of the Manichæans, that it should be honoured by a
dishonour; nor was it poured forth into the air and dissolved, as is the nature
of a voice or the flow of an odour, or the course of a lightning flash that
never stands. Where in that case were His being handled after the Resurrection,
or His being seen hereafter by them that pierced Him, for Godhead is in its
nature invisible. Nay; He will come with His body—so I have learnt—such as He
was seen by His Disciples in the Mount, or as he shewed Himself for a moment,
when his Godhead overpowered the carnality. And as we say this to disarm
suspicion, so we write the other to correct the novel teaching.

If anyone assert that His flesh came down from heaven, and is not from hence,
nor of us though above us, let him be anathema. For the words, The Second Man is
the Lord from Heaven; and, As is the Heavenly, such are they that are Heavenly;
and, No man hath ascended up into Heaven save He which came down from Heaven,
even the Son of Man which is in Heaven; and the like, are to be understood as
said on account of the Union with the heavenly; just as that All Things were
made by Christ, and that Christ dwelleth in your hearts is said, not of the
visible nature which belongs to God, but of what is perceived by the mind, the
names being mingled like the natures, and flowing into one another, according to
the law of their intimate union.

If anyone has put his
trust in Him as a Man without a human mind, he is really bereft of mind, and
quite unworthy of salvation. For that which He has not assumed He has not
healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved. If only half Adam
fell, then that which Christ assumes and saves may be half also; but if the
whole of his nature fell, it must be united to the whole nature of Him that was
begotten, and so be saved as a whole. Let them not, then, begrudge us our
complete salvation, or clothe the Saviour only with bones and nerves and the
portraiture of humanity. For if His Manhood is without soul, even the Arians
admit this, that they may attribute His Passion to the Godhead, as that which
gives motion to the body is also that which suffers. But if He has a soul, and
yet is without a mind, how is He man, for man is not a mindless animal? And this
would necessarily involve that while His form and tabernacle was human, His soul
should be that of a horse or an ox, or some other of the brute creation. This,
then, would be what He saves; and I have been deceived by the Truth, and led to
boast of an honour which had been bestowed upon another. But if His Manhood is
intellectual and nor without mind, let them cease to be thus really mindless.

But, says such an one, the Godhead took the place of the human intellect. How
does this touch me? For Godhead joined to flesh alone is not man, nor to soul
alone, nor to both apart from intellect, which is the most essential part of
man. Keep then the whole man, and mingle Godhead therewith, that you may benefit
me in my completeness. But, he asserts, He could not contain Two perfect
Natures. Not if you only look at Him in a bodily fashion. For a bushel measure
will not hold two bushels, nor will the space of one body hold two or more
bodies. But if you will look at what is mental and incorporeal, remember that I
in my one personality can contain soul and reason and mind and the Holy Spirit;
and before me this world, by which I mean the system of things visible and
invisible, contained Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. For such is the nature of
intellectual Existences, that they can mingle with one another and with bodies,
incorporeally and invisibly. For many sounds are comprehended by one ear; and
the eyes of many are occupied by the same visible objects, and the smell by
odours; nor are the senses narrowed by each other, or crowded out, nor the
objects of sense diminished by the multitude of the perceptions.

But where is there mind of man or angel so perfect in comparison of the Godhead
that the presence of the greater must crowd out the other? The light is nothing
compared with the sun, nor a little damp compared with a river, that we must
first do away with the lesser, and take the light from a house, or the moisture
from the earth, to enable it to contain the greater and more perfect. For how
shall one thing contain two completenesses, either the house, the sunbeam and
the sun, or the earth, the moisture and the river? Here is matter for inquiry;
for indeed the question is worthy of much consideration. Do they not know, then,
that what is perfect by comparison with one thing may be imperfect by comparison
with another, as a hill compared with a mountain, or a grain of mustard seed
with a bean or any other of the larger seeds, although it may be called larger
than any of the same kind? Or, if you like, an Angel compared with God, or a man
with an Angel. So our mind is perfect and commanding, but only in respect of
soul and body; not absolutely perfect; and a servant and a subject of God, not a
sharer of His Princedom and honour. So Moses was a God to Pharaoh, but a servant
of God, as it is written; and the stars which illumine the night are hidden by
the Sun, so much that you could not even know of their existence by daylight;
and a little torch brought near a great blaze is neither destroyed, nor seen,
nor extinguished; but is all one blaze, the bigger one prevailing over the
other.

But, it may be said, our mind is subject to
condemnation. What then of our flesh? Is that not subject to condemnation? You
must therefore either set aside the latter on account of sin, or admit the
former on account of salvation. If He assumed the worse that He might sanctify
it by His incarnation, may He not assume the better that it may be sanctified by
His becoming Man? If the clay was leavened and has become a new lump, O ye wise
men, shall not the Image be leavened and mingled with God, being deified by His
Godhead? And I will add this also: If the mind was utterly rejected, as prone to
sin and subject to damnation, and for this reason He assumed a body but left out
the mind, then there is an excuse for them who sin with the mind; for the
witness of God—according to you—has shewn the impossibility of healing it. Let
me state the greater results. You, my good sir, dishonour my mind (you a
Sarcolater, if I am an Anthropolater) that you may tie God down to the Flesh,
since He cannot be otherwise tied; and therefore you take away the wall of
partition. But what is my theory, who am but an ignorant man, and no
Philosopher. Mind is mingled with mind, as nearer and more closely related, and
through it with flesh, being a Mediator between God and carnality.

Further let us see what is their account of the assumption of Manhood, or the
assumption of Flesh, as they call it. If it was in order that God, otherwise
incomprehensible, might be comprehended, and might converse with men through His
Flesh as through a veil, their mask and the drama which they represent is a
pretty one, not to say that it was open to Him to converse with us in other
ways, as of old, in the burning bush and in the appearance of a man. But if it
was that He might destroy the condemnation by sanctifying like by like, then as
He needed flesh for the sake of the flesh which had incurred condemnation, and
soul for the sake of our soul, so, too, He needed mind for the sake of mind,
which not only fell in Adam, but was the first to be affected, as the doctors
say of illnesses. For that which received the command was that which failed to
keep the command, and that which failed to keep it was that also which dared to
transgress; and that which transgressed was that which stood most in need of
salvation; and that which needed salvation was that which also He took upon Him.
Therefore, Mind was taken upon Him.

This has now been
demonstrated, whether they like it or no, by, to use their own expression,
geometrical and necessary proofs. But you are acting as if, when a man’s eye had
been injured and his foot had been injured in consequence, you were to attend to
the foot and leave the eye uncared for; or as if, when a painter had drawn
something badly, you were to alter the picture, but to pass over the artist as
if he had succeeded. But if they, overwhelmed by these arguments, take refuge in
the proposition that it is possible for God to save man even apart from mind,
why, I suppose that it would be possible for Him to do so also apart from flesh
by a mere act of will, just as He works all other things, and has wrought them
without body. Take away, then, the flesh as well as the mind, that your
monstrous folly may be complete. But they are deceived by the latter, and,
therefore, they run to the flesh, because they do not know the custom of
Scripture. We will teach them this also. For what need is there even to mention
to those who know it, the fact that everywhere in Scripture he is called Man,
and the Son of Man?

If, however, they rely on the
passage, The Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us, and because of this erase
the noblest part of Man (as cobblers do the thicker part of skins) that they may
join together God and Flesh, it is time for them to say that God is God only of
flesh, and not of souls, because it is written, “As Thou hast given Him power
over all Flesh,” and “Unto Thee shall all Flesh come;” and “Let all Flesh bless
His holy Name,” meaning every Man. Or, again, they must suppose that our fathers
went down into Egypt without bodies and invisible, and that only the Soul of
Joseph was imprisoned by Pharaoh, because it is written, “They went down into
Egypt with threescore and fifteen Souls,” and “The iron entered into his Soul,”
a thing which could not be bound. They who argue thus do not know that such
expressions are used by Synecdoche, declaring the whole by the part, as when
Scripture says that the young ravens call upon God, to indicate the whole
feathered race; or Pleiades, Hesperus, and Arcturus are mentioned, instead of
all the Stars and His Providence over them.

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